Page 127 of Black Sea

The only one who had had the guts to speak to me looked around and gasped. “What witchcraft is this?”

Mine.

Then I summoned them with my mind.

They emerged from the shadows of the columns stretching into the side aisles. The sticky membrane, bleeding a pitch-dark substance, that coated their lead-gray skin caught the light of the braziers’ flames as they dragged their long, sturdy, humanoid forms into the central nave.

The humans tried to merge with one another when they got surrounded, yelping like frightened cubs; some pissed themselves, and the hungry gurgles of the monsters, awaiting my command, grew louder.

“Your Majesty!” the stocky man screamed, waving his arms in an unsuccessful attempt to break free from the tight group. “Please wait! Wait!”

I gave a hint of a smirk. “Eat,” I ordered in the witches’ ancient language.

My creatures pounced on the men, dismembering them with the large, curved claws at the ends of the single, deformed, big finger of their enormous hands, shearing fresh flesh and pulpy organs with their saber teeth, spraying blood, guts, and fetid blackish drool all the way to the steps of the throne.

I enjoyed the noise of their chewing and the sound of their digging through bones and ligaments for a few moments. Then I leaned my head against the backrest, took a deep breath, and re-established my connection with the elf’s mind.

I found her standing before the cabinet with an oval mirror, paralyzed by the sight of her new reflection.

Almost in slow motion, she lifted her hand to touch beneath her eye. She froze, holding her breath.

The skin around her blue eyes had turned purple, so dark near her eyelashes that it looked almost black. A web of broken capillaries snaked from her lower eyelids to her cheeks and temples.

I had watched her take on that appearance little by little, day by day, glance by glance, touch by touch.

And finally, now that I had undone the cloaking spell I had cast on her when she first grasped my hand and hoisted me up that tree to save me, she, too, could admire her new form.

She could admire the darkness within her.

The darkness I gave her.

Spasmodic sobs began to attack her. One by one, tears streamed down her already damp cheeks. Her face crumpled into a mask of fury until a cry of despair burst from her chest, sounding like the most devastating sound I had ever heard.

I smiled with cruel satisfaction.

I watched her fall, and fall, and fall. Just as I wanted. I enjoyed watching her drag her nails over her eyes, almost as if she wanted to pull them from their sockets, then over her chest and arms, as if trying to scrape away the darkness she felt flowing through her tissues.

She couldn’t stop staring at herself in the mirror.

But while she saw only monstrosity, I saw incomparable beauty.

I saw my mark.

The Spirits thought they had somehow caged me by tying me to the elf, but I would be the one to screw them. Because Nauriel had become my puppet, and I would control her strings without mercy, just as I had done up to that moment, until she gave me that damned Crystal.

And she would, eventually.

For she couldn’t resist me.

Suddenly, her furious screams devolved into a searing weeping. A weeping that would have been melodious to my ears, if only she hadn’t started calling out that stupid name I’d given her, and remembering the moments we’d spent together and my fake smile.

I clenched my fists on the throne’s armrests.

With my jaw working ever more, I watched her grip the sheets soaked with our scent. Bury her face into the pillow I had slept on.

And call, call, call me.

Call the one who had only been a lie.